International Blog Against Racism Week

[truepenny]

coffeeandink explains it and demonstrates it.

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I'm a white middle-class girl from east Tennessee. I am in fact what you might call hyper-white--not only do I have a kind of albinism that makes me markedly paler than the rest of my family, my ethnic descent is almost entirely English, Irish, and Scottish. WASP all the way, baby. The closest I come to minority heritage is an ancestor who was kidnapped by Indians way back in the day when such things happened.

So blonde, blue-eyed, ethnically "pure." (PLEASE notice the sarcastic quote marks there.) The Hitler Youth would snap me up in a heartbeat. I comfort myself with the fact that they wouldn't like me once they had me.

So if I'm uncomfortable talking about race, which I am, it's because I'm all too aware of my subject position. And I'm all too aware of how that subject position correlates with privilege in American society.

But what that privilege means is that I could ignore the whole subject if I wanted to. I have the luxury of not thinking about race. And that's a cop-out and a cheat.

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Felix and Mildmay are both white. However, native Melusiniens are not white--athough Melusine is such a melting pot that there are characters of other ethnic backgrounds (such as Monspulchra, where Shannon's mother was from) who are also very pale-skinned. But the people of the Grasslands (which is most of Kekropia, Marathat, and the eastern edge of Tibernia) are brown/olive-to-gold complected. The people of the Imari (the islands to the south of the continent) are Nubian black, although they have green eyes. We hear a lot about Felix and Mildmay's pale skin because it's unusual. Blondes are a commodity in Melusine because they're rare.

So my heroes fall into the tidy Default Fantasy Caucasian category (with bonus Mary Sue points for Felix's yellow eye), but the world around them doesn't. I didn't do that intentionally--it's just the way the world grew--but I'm retroactively rather pleased about it.

Comments

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the issue is another string in the same rope of privilege that matociquala was talking about in her post on Othering, really.

Also, if I may say so, your observation about your book made think--Mildmay has really internalized the idea of the local (i.e. Melusine's) norm = attractive, from what I recall of his remarks about his own coloring, while Felix seems to have learned to work being the Exotic Other for all it's worth. Do you get up in the morning and start being subversive once you're dressed, or is it pretty much automatic?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Felix remembers their mother.

(Which is to say, yes, you're right.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I can see how that would make a great deal of difference.

Get out there and subvert some more stuff. I am greatly looking forward to the wolves book, and can report that I saw a paperback copy of Melusine last night at the Nashville David-Kidd, along with copies of excellent works by Scott Lynch and this woman whose last name is Bear.

Pops in to say...

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

Kiefer Sutherland may soon be playing a yellow-skinned guy named Raistlin Majere. Story here. (http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/07/16/2054233.shtml) Thought you might find that at least moderately intriguing.

Re: Pops in to say...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I am so relieved it's an animated movie there are no words.

Thanks for the pointer.

Re: Pops in to say...

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I heard the DVD cover of the live-action Dungeons & Dragons movie is now in the unabridged dictionary as a new defintion for "tripe." Kiefer as Raistlin and Smallville's Lex Luthor (a man torn between good and evil) as Tanis (a man torn between two worlds/cultures) -- that's interesting casting, at least.

[oyceter]

Apologies... I haven't read the book yet, so I may very well be completely wrong.

You probably already realize this, but, I feel having heroes in the Default Fantasy Caucasian category (thank you for recognizing that, by the way!) with a non-Caucasian world gets its own set of problems, probably best illustrated by Firefly. Which isn't to say that having a non-Caucasian world isn't a good thing, because yay! I'm all for less Euro-fantasy. But I always feel sad reading fantasy and realizing that so many of the protagonists are white. Also, it seems most non-white protagonists seem to be in non-white worlds (Japanese fantasy, etc.), as opposed to having a non-white protagonist in a white world.

What I mean to say is that, there are so few representations of people of color in fantasy and their roles tend to be limited to worlds in which all the people are POC, when I pick up a book with a non-Caucasian setting and get a Caucasian hero, there's a part of me that's disappointed.

Which is not to say that you are obligated to write that or that what you wrote is wrong, but more to say that I wish there were more POC in fantasy so that when you had a Caucasian hero in a non-Caucasian setting, there wouldn't be this fuss, because there would be lots of representation already.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that race in Firefly is a problem (if everybody's speaking Chinese, WHERE ARE ALL THE CHINESE PEOPLE?), and I would like to think that that's not what I've done.

Although, goodness knows, I could be deeply and horribly wrong.

It is a plot point that my protagonists are pale skinned and red haired--it says something very specific about their ethnic origins. One of them has been dyeing his hair black his whole life because there are no other red-heads, and because red hair is considered bad luck in Mélusine.

So, as fidelioscabinet was pointing out earlier, their coloring is actually the mark of the Other.

I'd also do things very differently if I were starting these books now. But I started writing about these characters in 1993, when I was even less capable of dealing with these issues in my own writing than I am now, and so a lot of stuff about race and class and sex is grandfathered in, and can be subverted to a certain degree (like the fact that my protagonists are Default Fantasy Caucasian) but not abolished.

Which is all a waffly way of saying, maybe I'll do better next time?

[oyceter]

(am looking forward to reading the book, btw)

And I always forget how long the timespan is between the actual writing of the book and the publishing of it.

Also, thanks so much for responding! I didn't want to make you uncomfortable, and it's such a nidgy issue for me that it's difficult for me to comment on. Which is a waffly way of saying, thanks for being so cool about it!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, if you don't say something, then ... nothing gets said.

I was raised (I think--trying to undo one's own social conditioning is always a bitch) to believe that talking about race in any way, shape, or form was terribly impolite. I mean, TERRIBLY. So I'm not very good at having this sort of conversation.

Which isn't to say I should be excused (hell, no)--just that, well, I'm not very good at it. I'm trying to improve.

Race and Manners

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

I was raised (I think--trying to undo one's own social conditioning is always a bitch) to believe that talking about race in any way, shape, or form was terribly impolite. I mean, TERRIBLY. So I'm not very good at having this sort of conversation.

Oh, gosh, yes. It was Wrong and Impolite to Notice people's colour or race, because then you might be a Racist, and Nice People Aren't Racist. Nice People Are Colourblind.

I'm ashamed at how long it's taken me to understand that the only reason I could afford not to think about race was that I was part of the priviliged one.

(I'm here by way of matociquala IBAR post, by the way.)

Re: Race and Manners

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It wasn't even about not being racist. It was one of those things you Just Don't Do.

And things you Just Don't Do don't have explanations or reasons. You Just Don't Do them, and that's that.

It's a very clever way of interpolating people (in the Althusserian sense) into the dominant paradigm. Because it (a.) asserts itself as an existential given and (b.) makes you feel guilty for questioning your own privilege.